The further you get from the bustle of Bergen and Oslo, the better. Once you’ve taken light pollution out of the equation, head north and don’t look back. The
Lofoten Islands, on the Norway’s northwest coast, are a great place to start, with their plentiful fishing villages fringed by sweeping white sand beaches. Further along the coast, you’ll come to the Lyngen Peninsula where fjords and fishing combine with traditional Sami culture, all within easy access of the beautiful city of Tromsø. There’s nowhere like a remote mountain lodge in the Lyngen Alps in which to escape the world and watch the skies with a warm glass of gløgg.
Continuing north takes you to Finnmark, Norway’s largest county and its least populated. Finnmark’s coastline is dominated by fjords and vast colonies of sea birds, but travel inland, through the pine and spruce filled valleys, and you’ll find lakes, rivers and vast plateaus of Arctic tundra. Dog sledding in the wilderness, from hut to hut, is one of the most exhilarating ways to witness the aurora borealis. There’s only one scrap of land between Finnmark and the North Pole, and that’s the remote
Svalbard Archipelago. This is one of the only locations on the planet where you can see the Northern Lights during the ‘day’, thanks to the endless darkness of the Arctic winter.
